Two years ago today was a Wednesday. The Columbia County Board met in the morning, and by mid-afternoon, my story was written for the next day's paper.
Just as I'd hit all the computer keys to send my story to "first edit," my phone rang. It was the company's human resources director.
He'd received my doctor's report on the condition of my osteoarthritic knee, including Dr. Hampton's opinion that it could take as much as three months to restore something like full mobility. Therefore, the HR director said, I was to go home immediately and stay home until my doctor cleared me to go back to work. I was not to work from home. I was not to work at all. Disability leave, he called it, and it was mandatory.
My editor hadn't been told about this, much less consulted. My absence would leave him and the two other PDR reporters in a lurch. My editor asked, and I readily agreed, that I call my doctor's office and see if I can't get permission to return to work, maybe as soon as the following Monday.
The nurse at my doctor's office had this response: "Let's see how physical therapy works out first."
My initial PT appointment, with physical therapist Dan M., was scheduled for Jan. 27.
Until then, I braced my knee (with the immobilizer I'd gotten in the Phoenix ER), parked myself in my recliner and watched TV -- including watching, in a combination of fascination and horror, the beginning of the too-long national shit-storm that is the Trump Administration.
The HR director called it mandatory disability leave.
I came to call it a healing sabbatical.
Although I spent the whole six weeks eager to return to work, I know now that these six weeks were among the most transformative weeks of my life. I would thank God, and thank my company's HR department, for making this sabbatical happen.
Stepping away from my crazy, irregular work schedule was part of what made this time so healing.
So was physical therapy, the centerpiece of this time. From Dan M. on land, Dan S. at the warm-water pool and Nate the PT intern, I was receiving gentle, professional and intuitive guidance not only toward mobility, but also to overall health. None of them fat-shamed me, or yelled in my face. They treated me like a full, multi-dimensional human being, capable of evolving and improving myself even on the cusp of my seventh decade of life.
I loved them for it. I do still.
But while the Dans and Nate clearly were at the center of this life-changing sabbatical (which is why I describe my observance as a Dan-iversary -- couldn't resist!), I can't overlook the role of my company's management, including the HR director, for making this happen.
I didn't lose a day of pay, by the way. Federal law requires companies to give employees up to 12 weeks of family medical leave, but not to make it paid leave; thanks to my company's generosity, I didn't have to burn sick leave or vacation to keep my income for that period between Jan. 18 and March 1, when I wasn't cranking out stories and running around with a camera.
A year later, I'd make a similar arrangement for eight weeks of disability leave, to recuperate, with more PT guided by the Dans, from knee replacement surgery.
I didn't start my weight-loss efforts, by the way, until I returned to work. That actually started with my coverage of the spring non-partisan election in April, when I declined the traditional election-night entree of pizza and instead ordered a garden fresca salad from Culver's.
But that's another story.
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